Japan’s Unesco-listed Sado Island Gold Mine site must more fully acknowledge the Korean laborers forced to work there while preserving the identities of people affected by its wartime mining history.
The Korean government held a memorial ceremony on Nov. 21, 2025, at the Sado Island Gold Mines in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, for victims of forced labor mobilization. Pictured are old buildings remaining near the entrance to the road leading to the mine tunnels.YONHAP
Park So-young The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.
“From here, even prison looks like paradise.”
The line appears in Japanese novelist Seicho Matsumoto’s “Sado Runinko” (1957). It's how a man sent to Sado Island during the Edo period describes his plight. Sado was then a place of exile, and homeless men stripped of official residence were also sent to labor in its gold mines. Once they crossed the sea, returning alive was difficult. Instead of golden treasure, they faced grueling work endlessly pumping groundwater from low, dark tunnels.
Matsumoto’s story conveys the brutality in small details. Before being sent into the mine, the laborers were unable even to stomach amazake, a fermented rice drink. The episode suggests how they understood what awaited them underground: exhausting labor in confined spaces where survival could be uncertain. The glitter of Sado’s gold was inseparable from the darkness endured by those who extracted it.
About 30 years ago, I too sailed from Niigata to Sado. After crossing the blue sea for more than two hours, I arrived at a beautiful island known as the home of the crested ibis, a protected species. The mine tunnels were different, however: Mannequins holding pickaxes half-stood in cramped passages too low for a person to straighten up.
At the time, I thought that was Sado’s history. Looking back, however, there was another history I never heard about there: that of Korean laborers who worked at the mines during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.
The Sado Island Gold Mines were inscribed on Unesco's World Heritage List in 2024. Japan pledged to faithfully present the site’s “whole history” across all periods of mining. Yet the gap between Korea and Japan remained at the third annual memorial ceremony on Sept. 12. Japan’s memorial address acknowledged that Korean laborers performed dangerous, harsh work during the war and that some died, but made no mention of the coercive nature of their mobilization. The Korean government and bereaved families protested by staying away from the Japanese ceremony for a third consecutive year.
Unesco's World Heritage Committee acknowledged additional interpretation and exhibition measures this year but said further clarification was needed on how the site comprehensively presents its “whole history.” It also called for consultations with countries concerned. Japan must submit another implementation report by Dec. 1, 2027. World Heritage inscription, then, was not the end. The work of deciding what and how to remember continues.
Sado is not alone in casting such shadows. At the Chosei coal mine in Yamaguchi Prefecture, 136 Koreans died in a 1942 accident in an undersea shaft. Hashima Island, or Battleship Island, also bears the history of forced mobilization. What matters is not merely listing casualty figures but recovering and remembering the names and lives of those who worked there.
More than a decade ago in Hokkaido, I met a third-generation Korean resident of Japan whose grandfather had been brought there during the colonial period to build an airport runway. To survive discrimination, his grandfather prohibited Korean even at home. Seeing Korean culture later gain worldwide attention, the grandson regretted not having learned the language at home. One generation’s experiences shape the memories and choices of the next.
The dispute over Sado should therefore not be viewed merely as a diplomatic contest over whether the word “forced” appears. Japan should more faithfully present Sado’s history in keeping with its international commitments. Korea, beyond protesting through nonattendance, should locate and preserve the names and records of Korean laborers scattered across Japan. DNA testing of remains from the Chosei mine, launched this year but slowed by difficulties obtaining samples from bereaved families, is part of that work.
A World Heritage site should not display only the history a country wants to celebrate. Nor should it emphasize only one side’s suffering. To deserve the name, it must show both the light and shadows accumulated at the place.
The low, dark tunnels I entered on Sado 30 years ago remain there today. It is time they also showed the names and lives of the people who worked inside them.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
